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And the number one problem that any method of carbon capture that involves moving things around, is that you have to add the carbon expenditure of that transpor

And the number one problem that any method of carbon capture that involves moving things around, is that you have to add the carbon expenditure of that transportation into the mix. You wanna create charcoal and spread it over crop fields? You then have to transfer that charcoal. You want to embed CO2 in concrete and bury the concrete? You have to move the concrete. (You can use it for building, but there's additional infrastructure for transporting the CO2 to the concrete or vice-versa there as well.) So many of the "barely break even" concepts don't even come close due to this transportation factor. Even if you use solar to generate electricity to power this transportation, we don't have excess solar yet - that's capacity that's being used for this new expense, not being used to offset existing expenses. That said, I'm hopeful that research, refinement, and excess renewable grid capacity will eventually make it worthwhile to do this in addition to reducing our fossil fuel usage, but we just _gotta_ reduce our fossil fuel usage. It's not negotiable anymore, and heck, never was.

rtpg 2y ago
If you're doing the book-keeping on that stuff, though, comparing to the status quo.. that charcoal that is on the crops used to be some fertilizer that also was being transported, right? You have to be careful not to double-count progress but if you consider things relative to status quos, then you're still looking at progress right? Like improvements are still good, right? Like if you're dead set on building a building, you're gonna need concrete no matter what. Might as well use "good" concrete I guess? Though there's likely not much magic to where building the building _reduces_ CO2 net.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  >then you're still looking at progress right? Like improvements are still good, right? No, because they share a budget and thus have opportunity cost.
  - rtpg 2y ago
    Fair enough. I think it’s possible to do a lot of things at once but if you have a “fixed” budget you really should just order by effectiveness. Fungibility is pretty context dependent

rtpg 2y ago

If you're doing the book-keeping on that stuff, though, comparing to the status quo.. that charcoal that is on the crops used to be some fertilizer that also was being transported, right? You have to be careful not to double-count progress but if you consider things relative to status quos, then you're still looking at progress right? Like improvements are still good, right? Like if you're dead set on building a building, you're gonna need concrete no matter what. Might as well use "good" concrete I guess? Though there's likely not much magic to where building the building _reduces_ CO2 net.

Qwertious 2y ago
>then you're still looking at progress right? Like improvements are still good, right? No, because they share a budget and thus have opportunity cost.
- rtpg 2y ago
  Fair enough. I think it’s possible to do a lot of things at once but if you have a “fixed” budget you really should just order by effectiveness. Fungibility is pretty context dependent